CCIE and the iPhone 3G
by Nickelby Thane
It’s not that often that I would combine one of the world’s hardest exams to pass with one of the most desirable Apple products. That being said, the iPhone 3G is in a class of its own compared to other phones on the market. Granted, the hardware specs are at most ‘normal’ with 3G support, HSDPA, A-GPS and not to mention the miniscule 2.0MP camera at its arsenal. However the iPhone 3G has an ace up its sleeves, applications. Yes folks … there are thousands and thousands of applications with new ones created everyday for the iPhone 3G. From productivity applications to games, there is at least one application which is suitable for anyone having the iPhone 3G. You are more than welcome to bash me on that remark. And yes, it’s not an April Fool joke :-).
Now how does this tie in with the CCIE? I am glad you asked. If you’re a CCIE candidate like me who spends quite some time on the Internet and also on social-networking/micro-blogging applications like Facebook, Twitter and even Skype, the iPhone 3G has applications for these services. Apart from that, I love to carry VoDs with me due to the very nature that I travel quite a distance to work (45 minutes train journey excluding the waiting time to board the train if there is a huge crowd). I also find myself travelling quite a bit nowadays attending trainings which are non-Cisco/non-CCIE/non-network related and also for work projects. This means that instead of lugging a notebook to suppress my appetite for CCIE-related information as well as staying connected with you Cisco geeks on Twitter or Facebook (ok … and Skype for some) as well as my family members, the need to have an all-in-one truly mobile and light device is beneficial. Now the iPhone 3G comes in as a natural choice. Why?
Apart from the fact that it is also a 3G phone which I can use to keep in touch with my Cisco vendors, Cisco gurus as well as pesky users, it serves me well for the applications that I just mentioned above. For Facebook, there is a native Facebook application that does the job quite well (although I have not gotten over the issue that it still cannot display the application bar as I tend to surf Facebook groups a lot!). For Twitter, there is a host of really cool applications that does the job well. Personally I use Twitterific (I was a former user of Twitterfon and I do at times use it when I just have a change of mood). Skype has its own native application on the iPhone 3G which was launched a few days ago at this point of time (granted it only works on Wi-Fi and not 3G data at the moment. Apple big shots, if you are reading this which you should, please listen to your users and allow applications like Skype to ride on the 3G API in the iPhone!!!) . Finally, to surf blogs and websites such as Cisco, Google and of course CCIE Flyer’s website, there’s the Safari browser which works quite well :-). So that pretty covers much of the Internet-related requirements I have for a mobile device.
Now for the other requirements, VoDs! The iPhone 3G is essentially an iPod Touch with phone functions so if you have seen videos on the iPod Touch, you know that you are receiving one of the best and sharpest video displays on a mobile device. I have been playing Internetwork Expert’s VoDs on the iPhone 3G even since I got the phone. I re-encode the entire video library to play on the iPhone 3G replacing my previous mobile video device for my Internetwork Expert’s VoDs, my still lovable and trustable PSP-2000. I am still trying to figure out how to do the same for IPExpert’s VODs but due to the fact that the videos are structured in an unknown format to me plus there is no proper naming convention, I am hoping one day that IPExpert does release an iPhone-compatible product so that I can have the best of both worlds! But other than that, I have all the audio classes from both Internetwork Expert and IPExpert on my iPhone 3G so that whenever my eyes are too tired but my ears are still workable, I’ll tune in to one of those audio classes.
Now when I am tired with studying for the CCIE and I am already confusing EIGRP with OSPF and I am starting to think that BGP really means Boys Got Pen*ses indicating I am talking nonsense and needs a rest, the iPhone 3G has an army of games that can allow me to relax (ok … so some of the games are actually addictive and instead wasted more of my time than I really expected thus ‘stealing’ time from my CCIE studying time).
I have been a critic of the iPhone before only because I was a Nokia fan boy. But I vividly remembered the first time I saw an application installing on the iPhone 3G, the installation process was so much like Debian’s APT, and it was love at first sight for me. Now the only wish I have for the iPhone 3G is these three things (some of them might exist so let me know if they do. I am still an iPhone 3G newbie ;-)) namely Wireshark for iPhone 3G, NMAP for iPhone 3G and Metasploit for iPhone3G. Can’t hurt to wish for it eh?
Thanks again for reading this far. It’s time for me to hit the books again or err … play I mean study with the iPhone 3G :-)
Nickelby Thane is a CCIE R&S candidate who uses Skype on a daily basis as well as MSN Messenger. Apart from his CCIE studies and work, the balance of his free time is spent on playing tricks on his poor wife. If you would like to chat with him or tell him how boring his articles are getting (grins), please add him on Skype (search for nthane) or MSN Messenger (nickelby at hotmail dot com). Girls are strongly advised to add him with no guarantees of safety :-).
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